Acupuncture – a critical analysis
@article{Ernst2006AcupunctureA,
title={Acupuncture – a critical analysis},
author={Edzard Ernst},
journal={Journal of Internal Medicine},
year={2006},
volume={259}
}Even though widely used in today's clinical practice, acupuncture has remained a controversial subject. Many reviews are currently available but most lack a critical stance and some are overtly promotional. The aim of this overview is to provide a balanced, critical analysis of the existing evidence. Some of the original concepts of traditional acupuncture are not supported by good scientific evidence. Several plausible theories attempt to explain how acupuncture works but none are proved…
293 Citations
Clinical research on acupuncture. Part 1. What have reviews of the efficacy and safety of acupuncture told us so far?
- MedicineJournal of alternative and complementary medicine
- 2004
General international agreement has emerged that acupuncture appears to be effective for postoperative dental pain, postoperative nausea and vomit, and chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting.
Acupuncture – a treatment to die for?
- MedicineJournal of the Royal Society of Medicine
- 2010
Acupuncture has been associated with more deaths than most other ‘alternative’ therapies except herbal medicine, and case reports of adverse effects after acupuncture are frequently limited through poor reporting, particularly those published in the Chinese literature.
Clinical research on acupuncture. Part 2. Controlled clinical trials, an overview of their methods.
- MedicineJournal of alternative and complementary medicine
- 2004
A list of 45 criteria important in the design, implementation, and writing up of controlled clinical acupuncture trials is developed, after examining the quality assessment criteria used in meta-analyses and systematic reviews of acupuncture, general publications on clinical trial designs and methodological considerations specific to acupuncture trials.
Acupuncture: what does the most reliable evidence tell us?
- MedicineJournal of pain and symptom management
- 2009
Acupuncture is ineffective for chronic low back pain? A critical analysis and rethinking
- MedicineFrontiers of Medicine
- 2021
Pitfalls of the explanatory RCT model and sham acupuncture design should be avoided and establishing a new evaluation system that is in line with the clinical characteristics of acupuncture and obtaining high-quality evidence are difficult but promising tasks.
Is acupuncture no more than a placebo? Extensive discussion required about possible bias.
- MedicineExperimental and therapeutic medicine
- 2015
The present review aimed to suggest techniques to design high-quality studies, minimize the placebo effect and optimize acupuncture administration in acupuncture studies.
Acupuncture for fibromyalgia--a systematic review of randomized clinical trials.
- MedicineRheumatology
- 2007
The notion that acupuncture is an effective symptomatic treatment for fibromyaligia is not supported by the results from rigorous clinical trials and, on the basis of this evidence, acupuncture cannot be recommended for Fibromyalgia.
How might acupuncture work? A systematic review of physiologic rationales from clinical trials
- MedicineBMC complementary and alternative medicine
- 2006
Many acupuncture trials fail to offer a meaningful rationale, but proposing a rationale can help investigators to develop and test a causal hypothesis, choose an appropriate control and rule out placebo effects.
Efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of fibromyalgia.
- MedicineOrthopedic reviews
- 2021
An increasing number of studies support the utilization of acupuncture for the treatment of fibromyalgia, and mounting evidence supports its use as part of multimodal approaches to treatment with additive efficacy to traditional therapy.
Acupuncture: its evidence-base is changing.
- Medicine, BiologyThe American journal of Chinese medicine
- 2007
The results indicate that the evidence base has increased for 13 of the 26 conditions included in this comparison and the emerging clinical evidence seems to imply that acupuncture is effective for some but not all conditions.
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